“Don’t have expectations” “You never know what you are going to get” “leave your expectations at the door” These are phrases I hear ands/or said over and over on the race. Coming into the world race, we talked a lot about how our expectations, like what a country will be like or what our ministry will be, how our team will interact or how God is going to move, will never be what we think. If we hold on to these expectations, we will often be disappointed when they are not fulfilled the way we want. This reality became very real to me this month as I began to realize how expectations can hurt people without even realizing it!
I truly believe that you can never enter into a new situation without any expectations. Though on the world race your expectations may be lower than back in America, I still expect to have a place to sleep, a place to eat, a place to go to the bathroom, a place where I can stand up etc. But this last month my expectations were rocked. We didn’t have the normal things things that we expected to have at our ministry contact. The boys could only stand up in one room of the house, we had to use a public restroom 100 feet outside of our house, one of the room we lived in was only four feet tall. And let me tell you I freaked out. Coming into Malaysia, the country, so far, that is the most similar to America, I expected to be able to stand in our rooms and have some type of toilet in the house. And when I didn’t I was shocked, nervous, frustrated and confused. My expectations were definitely not met and it took a lot for me to be okay with that. Yet through our tight and somewhat uncomfortable living situation I was able to see God work in our team in so many awesome ways! We found a lot of ways to have fun, we dug deeper into the spirit and we had to lean on each other through this hard time. Through our living situation God convicted me of the expectations that I held on to that I didn’t know I have, reminding me that he is in control and knows what we need no matter what I think.
My expectation or standards however, do not only harm me but can hurt others as well. I have learned that expectations of things or people can harm the ways we function in the real world, how we relate to people and treat them. This month, we were the first team our ministry contact had hosted. As we worked in the after school program, my team though our contacted wanted us to help where she needed, taking off some of her burden and just loving on the kids the best we could. Our contact, however, had a very different idea. She EXPECTED that we would come in, ready to take over the ministry and do it all on our own, she EXPECTED that we would be six teachers that acted just liked her, ready to be harsh with the kids, keeping them in check and quiet, she EXPECTED that we understood what being Malaysian clean meant. But we didn’t understand this and we spent a majority of the month sorting through the miscommunication, striving to understand what she wanted from us, what she expected and feeling like we ultimately disappointed our contact in a variety of ways.
Through this experience I began to see how the expectations that we have and hold can ultimately corrupt experiences and relationships. Expectations set the bar to a certain level and when we don’t reach that bar, it takes twice as much effort to work backwards, losing the expectations we had, accepting people and situations for what it is or who they are and then start the process of investing and embracing it. Thats a lot of unnecessary work that can ultimately hurt people and ruin something that could have been good. By holding expectations we innocently put things on pedestals yet this wobbily pedestal is easy to fall off of because we are human and things are not perfect and we are ultimately left disappointed. One of my life sayings is “the only constant in life is change” and as life changes around us everyday I challenge you to strive to drop your expectations. Though it may be hard I challenge you to enter every situation with open hands, letting God work in and through each relationship, each situation instead of forcing our ideas of what things should be like on them. This way we allow God to enter into every aspect of our lives, allowing him to do what he knows is best instead of limiting him with our own thoughts, ideas and expectations!
